


Happily Ever After, Despite Unrequited Love

by barbara_princess_of_delphi



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, F/F, F/M, Gen, One-Sided Relationship, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 07:52:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1420393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbara_princess_of_delphi/pseuds/barbara_princess_of_delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alt title:<br/>Permutation Prompts #6, Option E - A Comprehensive Solution to the One-Sided Elsanna Problem</p>
<p>Anna and Kristoff are a true love match; Elsa tries to be happy for them. But, the more she suppresses her own heart's desire, the colder grows the eternal winter that slowly starves Arendelle. Elsa's magic seems to blackmail her conscience, holding the kingdom hostage, demanding the one thing she cannot have.</p>
<p>It's not that she can't have it, technically. Both sisters are equally willing to sacrifice their own happiness for each other - and both are equally unwilling to see the other deprived as a result. Therein lies the problem.</p>
<p>Outlined herein is one possible answer to one of the squickier moral dilemmas of the Elsanna fandom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happily Ever After, Despite Unrequited Love

Recall Elsa’s dilemma from Prompt #6: Elsa’s powers have gone out of control and frozen Arendelle again because Elsa has been “conceal-don’t-feel”-ing her unholy love for Anna, who doesn’t love her back the way Elsa needs her to. Since Elsa’s powers are flaring due to her jealousy and being denied her true love, the trolls think Elsa can thaw the kingdom by making love to her sister. However, Anna’s heart already belongs to Kristoff, so Elsa refuses to force herself on Anna under any circumstance.

Elsa contemplates suicide, but can’t bring herself to go through with it when she realizes how much it would hurt Anna. Then she considers running away, hoping that if she’s far away from the kingdom it won’t be affected by her powers, but she remembers that no one else is qualified to run the kingdom and everything will collapse if she leaves. But that’s not what stops Elsa from running away – she cares more about her sister than the kingdom. What does stop her is the knowledge that Anna will almost certainly chase after her and freeze to death in the process.

_(How does Elsa know this? One possibility is that she has watched Anna secretly over the years and simply knows her very well. The other possibility is that Anna screamed the above information in Elsa’s face after fortuitously walking in on Elsa holding a sharp icicle to her wrist. Either way, once Elsa knows Anna’s feelings on the subject, she won’t dare think about escaping ever again.)_

All Elsa wants is to leave Anna free to be happy with Kristoff, but it seems that’s the one thing she will never be able to do.

Out of ideas, and with Anna banging on her door, Elsa gives in and agrees to tell Anna what’s bothering her. But Elsa can’t talk to them face-to-face anymore because her powers are flaring out of control. Later that day, Anna and Kristoff find themselves talking through a thick barrier of clear ice that splits Elsa’s room right down the middle. Elsa sits on her bed facing them from inside the sealed half of her room, her old blue gloves solidly encased in ice.

Anna is used to talking through a barrier, and the current setup is a vast improvement over her childhood memories of crying against Elsa’s wooden door. Elsa explains her problem, and quickly gets into an argument with Anna. Both sisters insist on sacrificing their own happiness for the other, but neither can be happy accepting the other’s sacrifice. Finally, Elsa wins the argument by pointing out that Kristoff, their mutual friend, will be happier if Anna goes with him. Better for just Elsa and Anna to be miserable than all three of them together. Anna and Kristoff reluctantly agree to remain a couple as their hearts dictate.

Only after settling Anna’s problem does Elsa begin to consider the kingdom’s survival. The immediate concern is that Elsa’s eternal winter, during summertime, is preventing Arendelle’s crops from growing. The farmers have only just been compensated for the last freeze, and famine is a distinct possibility now that there will be yet another year without harvest.

Together, the three royals come up with an elaborate workaround. To convince the population to endure the hard times ahead, Elsa claims that her spies have reported an impending invasion by a Weselton-led alliance and she changed the weather to pre-emptively deter the invaders. However, as a side effect of her large outburst of power, she will need to be temporarily confined to her room again. Just as she did in the three years before her coronation, Elsa rules the kingdom using slips of paper under her door. The difference this time is that nowadays she seems to favor Anna and Kristoff as her primary messengers to the royal council. Anna makes a special effort to act royal with the councilors for the sake of making her sister proud, and their conversation through the door makes Elsa’s isolation far more bearable than before. The royal councilors are impressed at the change in their once flighty princess.

Ironically, Weselton’s spies have indeed infiltrated the royal palace, and their reports of Arendelle’s difficulties are precisely what persuade the Duke not to move against Arendelle. He calculates that Elsa will be occupied with her problems and no longer has tradeable goods worth invading for anyways, and thus Weselton needs not intervene to eliminate the threat of the witch queen. Elsa never learns that the cover story she thought she was making up is actually surprisingly close to the truth.

Meanwhile, with Arendelle’s natural fjord harbor solidly iced over, the new “coastline” is effectively several miles away from the docks, so massive sled relays are organized to bring supplies from ships dropping anchor just beyond the ice. The town’s main source of food becomes fishing, since it’s too cold to farm. Starving wolf packs emerging from the frozen forests become an additional source of meat. Even so, many families are reduced to one or two meals per day; Elsa orders the same deprivation for everyone in the royal household as a gesture of solidarity with her people.

But all this isn’t quite enough to fully support Arendelle; with their farms frozen and their coal mines inaccessible due to snow, they no longer have enough trade goods to buy all the other things they need on the international market. Desperate for money, Elsa prepares to become the monster she always feared herself to be – by hiring herself out as a mercenary, since her powers can easily defeat any army. But Anna finally stops her. For months Anna has watched Elsa sacrifice her feelings in an attempt to be a good older sister, and now it’s the younger sister who can’t take it anymore.

Anna never thought she would be willing to do what it takes to help Elsa control her powers. But months of watching her sister and her subjects suffer through the eternal winter have changed her mind; the guilt of being the only person getting everything she wants (both romantically and sisterly) has accumulated, and she resolves that it is her turn to be miserable.

Anna, Kristoff, and Sven devise a new scheme to keep Arendelle alive. As long as the ground can be thawed for eight months of the year, Arendelle will produce enough crops to regain most of its former commerce. They’ve determined that when Elsa loses control of her powers, the winter extends up to 20 miles in all directions, depending on terrain. So, the solution is simple: Elsa will spend each spring and summer on a ship anchored 20 miles away from the coastline. During the crucial autumn harvest season, Anna will take a sled from the coast over to Elsa’s ship, and become her lover for a long enough time to let Elsa thaw everything out and sail the ship home. Elsa will spend the winter season at home making ice sculptures and ice, which are Arendelle’s other major exports aside from farm food and coal. Then, before spring is normally supposed to start, Elsa and Anna will sail away to the safe distance where Elsa can let out her powers again, and Anna will return by sled. The spring thaw will then occur as normal.

Anna slips the proposal under Elsa’s door, but Elsa violently refuses. Elsa hasn’t let anyone into her room since the day they last talked about Elsa’s little problem, and Anna and Kristoff spend a winter pleading with Elsa through her door. The “regular” winter season passes by, and they realize that if they can’t get Elsa to thaw the kingdom by springtime, spring will never arrive, and the farmers won’t be able to plant their crops, and the kingdom really will starve if this keeps up.

So one night in March, with some mechanical help from Kristoff and a few loyal servants, Anna sneaks down a rope from the roof and into Elsa’s window. In a spectacular feat of acting, Anna seduces her half-asleep sister by imagining Kristoff in place of Elsa. Elsa thought it was a dream, and is horrified to wake up next to Anna the next morning. But Anna heroically repeats her lover-act convincingly enough to fulfill her sister’s fantasy – this time in the light of day. Princess Anna of Arendelle, once the spare of the kingdom, has become its savior. Better late than never, the silly rambunctious girl has grown up to become a true princess: knowledgeable in matters of state, skilled at hiding her emotions and following her head at the expense of her heart.

After consummating their heinous sin, the sisters happily go to breakfast where Kristoff barges in excitedly with the good news. It worked! Background music in the movie version, inaudible to our characters, begins a rousing reprise with the line “The sun shines bright on the valley today” as the external visuals show cracks forming in the harbor ice under a clear blue sky.

_The sun shines bright on the valley today_  
 _Not a snowflake to be seen_  
 _A kingdom of sunshine and flowers  
_ _And it looks like I’m the queen…_

_*note: find the rest of Elsa's secret reprise[here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1288075/chapters/2670367) (warning: includes naughty double entendres)  
_

Back in the palace dining room, for a moment Elsa feels guilty at the sight of Kristoff, remembering what she has just taken from him, but Kristoff reassures her (mostly truthfully) that he secretly always knew he would come second to her in Anna’s heart, and he’s okay with that. (He tactfully doesn’t ask to share Anna just yet; Elsa would certainly agree, but they don’t want to risk her happy mood until she’s safely tucked away at sea.) As an elated Elsa basks in her finally fulfilled (and sick, twisted, and wrong) love, the harbor thaws and the streets are wet with melting snow and ice. Spring has arrived. Cheering and celebration can be heard throughout the streets, as the people look forward to days of plenty once again.

Anna persuades Elsa to take a “honeymoon” in their cousin’s kingdom of Corona, leaving Kristoff in charge at Arendelle. “Come on, just one week!” she pleads in her little-sister voice – but in her head, Anna is promising herself that this will be the last lie she ever tells her sister. The rest of the royal council is told that the sisters are merely taking a one-week “vacation” because Elsa needs to recharge her powers after the massive thaw. Corona is to the south of Arendelle, but Anna has secretly told the handpicked trusted crew to sail the ship north, to a designated spot at sea, 20 miles northwest of Arendelle – persuading them that she has a secret surprise planned for her older sister which will be waiting for them on another ship. As their ship exits the fjord, Anna keeps Elsa distracted below deck in their quarters.

Once they arrive at their destination, Anna admits her deception. Elsa instantly remembers the scheme Anna had proposed to her over the winter, realizing that she has been tricked into it after previously refusing to go along with it. Elsa’s fury and grief at being betrayed by the only person she has left in the world is so terrible, that Anna, for the first time ever in her life, feels fear in her sister’s presence. Within minutes, dense flurries of snow are flying all around them and ice is spreading along the sea surface, encrusting the ship in its place.

But this time around Anna knows her sister much better than during the last great freeze, and now Anna has some idea of what she must be thinking. All of Elsa’s anger at Anna for her scheming is insignificant next to the anger Elsa feels towards herself, for having fallen for it, for failing to protect Anna from her monstrous desires. The memories of just the recent few nights flash through Elsa’s mind, each incredibly pleasurable violation of her sister now serving to condemn herself further. Elsa’s disgust with herself matches the intensity of her love for Anna. Kristoff, Olaf, Arendelle, all of Elsa’s royal duties lie forgotten in the back of her mind. Her only clear thought is that she does not deserve to live, indeed never did. In the swirling storm of her emotions, matched by the blizzard around her, she is barely able to control her powers enough to form a sharp icicle in her hand. She raises the icicle like a dagger and…

Elsa knows exactly what’s happening before she even hits the icy deck of the ship, and yet again she hates herself for her failure – this time, for failing her last chance at escaping her curse. Elsa was so distraught that she didn’t even notice Anna still standing there watching her amid the snow flurries. Had she been thinking more clearly, she would have put up an ice barrier.

But she didn’t. And now Elsa lies spread-eagled on the deck with Anna pinning her wrists to either side in a death grip, the icicle just beyond her reach. Anna expected more of a struggle, but Elsa lies still beneath her, seeming resigned to her fate.

In her most reasonable queen voice, Elsa pleads with Anna to just let her die. Anna refuses. She still needs her sister, even if Arendelle no longer does. Elsa tries to scare Anna away and threatens to separate her from Kristoff forever. But Anna truthfully answers that Kristoff was right about being second in her heart. Anna feels obligated to her sister in a way that she doesn’t to her husband. Kristoff may be the one who makes her heart race and palms sweat, and the one whose children she wants to bear, but Elsa is the one who needs her more, and who has suffered more on her account. Anna considers both of them her family, and would like to keep them both in her life in some way. But if her sister must go a lifetime without true love, then she will do the same, in solidarity with her sister.

In their scheming over the winter, Anna and Kristoff had seen this possibility coming, especially after Elsa’s initial reaction to their idea. And so they are brilliantly prepared; Elsa can’t help being impressed when Anna reveals what’s in the ship’s hold. The horses and sleds that Anna previously claimed were for her and Elsa to use in Corona are, in fact, meant to send the loyal crew of their ship back to Arendelle, across the patch of sea that Elsa’s powers have frozen over. The provisions that would supply a full crew for two months are actually meant to last Elsa and Anna for up to two full years. And a full third of the ship’s stores are not the usual sailor’s rations but instead chocolate – in every form that was available in Arendelle. There is just one small flaw that Anna couldn’t fix in her plan. She was counting on fishing through the ice as part of their diet – but despite her secret efforts to learn, she is still terrible at cooking.

Thus, Arendelle returns to normal with Prince Kristoff increasingly treated as the real ruler, while Elsa and Anna spend the entire spring and summer living on the ship that has effectively become their mansion on a floating ice continent. Out on the sea, Elsa is free to blast huge volumes of ice in all directions whenever she needs to – a need which arises quite frequently, in fact every time Anna looks a little too appealing. Kristoff, according to the pre-arranged plan, sends Olaf to join them after the ship’s crew returns without Anna. Anna treasures the fleeting moments in which Elsa manages to forget her troubles and enjoy a sisterly moment. Elsa has refused to express any of her sexual longings since their last dramatic confrontation, which may be just as well; Anna has been away from Kristoff long enough, and misses him enough, that she isn’t sure if she can pull off the lover act again without accidentally moaning his name (which would be sure to ruin the mood for Elsa). Even so, Anna spends the entire summer refusing Elsa’s suggestion of going home to see Kristoff. Anna insists on waiting until the autumn harvest ends and winter begins, when the two of them will be able to return together, Elsa’s powers no longer out of place for the season.

The first winter is the hardest on Elsa. The bit of joy she felt upon seeing her home again is almost entirely squashed by her jealousy when she watches Anna fly into Kristoff’s arms with barely restrained passion. It still stings Elsa that she can’t be Kristoff in times like this, and she still feels a lingering guilt that Anna is choosing her over Kristoff for eight months of the year when she can’t give Anna what Kristoff gives her. But Elsa knows she’s accepted this compromise for Anna’s sake, and hopes that perhaps one day she will finally be content with this life.

Now it’s time for Elsa to finally discharge her royal responsibilities. The crowd cheers as she announces her abdication and crowns Kristoff and Anna as the new monarchs of Arendelle. Kristoff gives Elsa his own former title that she created for him – Royal Ice Master and Deliverer – though he reassures the murmuring crowd that the “delivery” part of her job will be taken over by subordinates; Elsa will only be appearing in person during the winter months.

All is now right in Arendelle. The kingdom prospers under King Kristoff’s reign, greatly aided by now-Princess Elsa’s ability to create ice full time without having royal duties. Queen Anna continues to split her time each year – eight months with her Royal Ice Master on the royal boat and four months at home with the King. Elsa throws herself into ice sculpting, sending her sculptures 20 miles across the ice to Arendelle’s harbor on the backs of a constant stream of snow monsters. Within a couple years, Elsa has almost single-handedly made Arendelle enough money to fully compensate all the farmers from her last summer freeze.

But one last challenge awaits. Now that Arendelle has recovered, it is once again prosperous enough to be worth conquering. The Weselton spies that were lying dormant throughout Arendelle’s government resume their work. Castle guards and servants are bribed into the intrigue one by one. Unholy rumors begin to spread across the kingdom, pointed questions about why the Queen spends twice as much time with the snow witch as she does with her King. Perhaps Elsa’s abdication was a ruse, they say; maybe she has both royals under magical compulsion, and she has distanced herself only to conceal her perversions with her own sister.

In a reversal of previous ironies, the Weselton spies now believe they are spreading vicious slander, never realizing how much Elsa wished for their most salacious accusations to be true.

One spring day, Weselton’s agents launch their coup. Anna and Elsa have just returned to sea from their winter at home when Sven knocks on their ship frantically. The sisters don’t need to understand reindeer language to realize that something must have happened to Kristoff.

The sisters rush back to find Weselton’s flag flying over the castle and Kristoff being held for ransom by the Duke. But the Royal Ice Mistress has lost none of her old touch. Exploiting the Duke’s ideological belief that she is evil, Elsa convinces the Duke that she will destroy his entire nation unless her own is returned. The Weseltonians soon retreat, Arendelle suffering only mild losses due to Elsa’s short return forcing them to replant all their just-planted crops from scratch.

In some other year, after returning to their boat/island one spring, Anna discovers that she’s pregnant. The child, heir to Arendelle, is born at home the following winter, and now the living arrangements become a more complicated problem. Elsa has never regained control of her powers and it is clear that she never will, at least not until she reaches menopause and stops wanting Anna that way. There are still many years remaining before Elsa can safely go anywhere near civilization (except in wintertime). After much deliberation and consulting the childcare experts, they ultimately decide to leave the child with Anna and Elsa for the first few years, then at home in the castle once the child is old enough for the royal tutors. The entire family can still be together in the winter, so at least both Anna and Kristoff will be able to see their child for some time each year. As the years go by, Anna and Kristoff have other children, but somehow, they figure out how to make it work….

…And so goes the unlikeliest, craziest, yet sanest happily-ever-after in the history of Disney.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone would be interested in writing more detailed fics based on this outline, please do let me know!
> 
> Note: This solution only works if Anna’s true love is actually Kristoff, or someone equally tolerant. If Anna’s true love is a jealous prince, I posit that no happy ending is possible.
> 
> Other solutions may be possible based on varying plausible interpretations of the characters from the movie. This is only one possible solution...


End file.
